Fear the Government That Fears Your Gun

In West Texas, it was not uncommon to see the bumper sticker “fear the government that fears your gun” on a lot of pick-up trucks during both terms of the Clinton administration. Like the rest of the South and much of the Midwest, we were hypersensitive to the thought of having our right to keep and bear arms infringed upon in any way. Moreover, common sense and annual FBI crime statistics taught us that 99.9% of the population only used their guns for defensive reasons, thus we were particularly leery of an administration that sought to take away our instruments of self-defense. Yet as bad as Clinton was, his push to disarm the American people would pale in comparison to what we’d see from a President Barack Obama, a man who not only wants to disarm the American people, but America’s allies as well.

In the 1990s, my fellow West Texans and I were especially bothered by the way Clinton turned every crime — from Columbine to gang activity — into an opportunity to pass incremental legislation which made it harder for law-abiding citizens to purchase and carry guns, and therefore harder to be free. And if Obama’s past is any indication, this is the same course he would take in his attempt to get guns out of our hands.

As an Illinois State Senator in 1999, Obama’s solution to gun crime in Chicago was not to push for stricter enforcement of laws already on the books but to support legislation limiting gun purchases to one a month. In other words, his “solution” to gang-related home invasions was to limit the homeowner’s access to firearms.

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg with this guy. During the 109th U.S. Congress, he voted against Senate bill 397, which outlawed frivolous lawsuits against gun companies. And while campaigning for the presidency in Pennsylvania earlier this year, he voiced his support for reinstating the assault weapons ban and spoke openly about his opposition to laws which allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns on or about their persons.

I always wondered what plans Clinton had for us if he could ever take away our guns, and now I wonder why Obama has been such a vocal critic of private gun ownership in the years leading up to his run for the presidency. What type of “change” does he have in store for the American people if he can succeed in disarming us?

Obama’s reasoning — and what his election would portend for the Second Amendment — are a part of a larger “unilateral disarmament” ideology that is one of his core values.Obama wants to disarm America nationally by defunding the missile defense initiatives of which Ronald Reagan dreamed and which President George W. Bush has begun implementing. In a video message to his supporters in 2007, Obama promised that, if elected, he would not “weaponize space” and that he would cut investments in the “unproven” missile defense systems Bush already has in place (add to this his additional promises to “slow our development of future combat systems” and pursue a “world without nuclear weapons” by reducing our own supply first, of course — it’s almost as if you can hear John Lennon asking us to “imagine there’s no heaven”).

Obama’s opposition to self-defense through missile defense equates to the disarmament of our allies around the globe (if there is no missile defense shield to deploy at home, there will be no shield to deploy abroad). This belief will not be lost on former Soviet satellites, which can see what Russia has done to Georgia in the past weeks and ascertain the kind of “change” Obama has in mind for them if he succeeds in denying them their best means of self-defense.

Even before Russia invaded Georgia, Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski indicated that he feared for Poland’s ability to defend herself should Obama win the presidency. In an interview with Desmond Butler, which ran in the Boston Globe on July 8, 2008, Sikorski said John McCain assured him that he would go forward with Bush’s plans to provide Poland with a missile defense system if elected president, but that Obama had provided “no such assurance.”

As the article continued, Butler summed up Sikorski’s sentiments on an Obama Presidency succinctly: “The Polish government is nervous that any deal it reaches with the Bush administration to allow the United States to install interceptors on Polish soil could be abandoned by the next administration.”

Yet on August 14, 2008, Poland did accept Bush’s plan to provide them with a missile defense shield, and Moscow immediately went on record citing this as an offensive move which will require military retaliation against Poland. Maybe I missed something — is this why Russia recently attacked Georgia? Does Georgia have a missile defense shield too?

No. Georgia doesn’t have such a shield but Vladimir Putin’s Russia has ambitions, lofty ambitions like those of Josef Stalin and Vladimir Lenin. All Putin needs to accomplish these ambitions is an enabler — someone who will deny Poles the instruments they need for self-defense and thereby open the door for an armed aggressor to do as he wishes. Obama promises to be Putin’s Johnny on the spot.

On the other hand, McCain supports the 2nd Amendment and the right to self-defense on both the individual and national level. He knows that refusing to provide Poland access to the tools she needs to defend herself is wrong and would expose her to attack in the same way that denying law-abiding U.S. citizens the right to possess firearms would expose them to attack by gangs of armed thugs and shameless perpetrators.

When McCain talks, gun owners and freedom-loving nations like Poland hear a man they can trust, while rogue nations and communist regimes hear a man they cannot control. But when Obama talks, even his friends hear weakness, while rogue nations and communist regimes hear a man they can manipulate. As for me, every time Obama talks, a little voice inside my head reminds me to “fear the government that fears your gun.”